MoR Domination Mes Experiement

With the recent buff it’s received, Mantra of Recovery has suddenly become a playable skill. So I’m considering an MoR variation on a stereotypical domination build:

Me/???

Fast Casting: 11+1
Domination: 10+3+1
Inspiration: 10+1

Mantra of Recovery {E}
Diversion
Empathy/???
Power Spike
Power Drain
Drain Enchantment
Ether Feast
Res Sig

Equipment wise I suggest the inspiration wand and focus for the potential recharge bonuses.

Maintain the MoR stance to keep your skills constantly available. Diversion can be maintained almost indefinitely while interrupts can be used to ruin key skills with the easily accessible spike/drain. Drain enchantment + Power Drain acts as the e-management here and with their recharges reduced to less than half of their usual time in addition to the wand/foci bonuses, these E-management skills should be able to put a heavy cramp on an enemy’s energy supply whilst keeping yours free and bountiful. Ether Feast becomes a four second recharge, energy draining, self-heal, but can be replaced with remove hex in more organized team builds for hex removal. Empathy can (and probably should) be replaced with just about anything as it’s really only there to discourage warriors (I can’t think of any other anti-weapon domination skills. Alternatives would be greatly appreciated.).

Two things:

If you're more interested in keeping your Inspiration skills recharged faster, I'd suggest getting ahold of something relatively cheap like the Handsmasher.

As for Empathy. There's nothing from the Domination line you can really replace it with. If you want a different effect you could always use Spirit Shackles.

hmm... wel i suppose if you dont have time to cast diversion, you could interrupt it, but id rather go with either a full interrupt build, or a full diversion penalty build (with backfire or ww) than have both

With the high rank in Fast Cast you'd need you should be able to reduce Diversion to at least a 2 second cast.

Would Glyph of Sacrifice be affected by MoR? As in reducing its penalty by half, or is that just hoping

Still not enough energy management...
For MoR you need...
Energy tap
Drain enchantment
Some other energy gaining skill...

Its insane how much you need really (MoR needs reduced cost to 5 imo)

Empathy could probably be replaced with said e-management skill. All of my E-management skills so far are pretty conditional, and though E-tap is as well, I think it's a little less so than Drain Enchantment and Power Drain.

I hate diversion. (but you guys knew that already)

I hate MoR. You can achieve similar results using other skills, even non-elite ones (like certain Ranger skills). MoR is such a huge pull on your nrg, it's very hard to keep up. Even if MoR Tap or smth.

i have been running a very similar build lately, already using MoR before it was actually buffed, this being PvE only of course. it might not have been the best elite out there, but i somehow always liked that skill . i usually play mesmer/ monk, for the hard rez(no ritualist secondary yet, cause i’m still playing through factions with my new toon, a warrior). i use this build mostly in FoW

i use a slightly different attribute points setup:

Fast Casting: 11 (10+1)
Domination Magic: 14 (11+3)
Inspiration Magic: 12 (10+1+1)

at fast casting 11 MoR has a 16 seconds duration. i somehow prefer to max out my inspiration line.

The skills i’m using:

Power Drain
Power Spike
Mantra of Recovery {Elite}
Diversion (i drop it sometimes for Energy Burn, if i want to deal more damage)
Empathy
Spirit of Failure
Ether Feast
Rez. (usually Rebirth)

Power Spike and Power Drain are pretty obvious, interrupts for damage and energy management. Mantra of Recovery {Elite} to keep my skills recharging, diversion on those Barrage spam rangers, works great on the shadow monks too. It can be used to disable Consume Corpse from the shadow beasts, the healing signet from the warriors, even the ranger’s troll unguent. obviously empathy and spirit of failure for the melee and ranger mobs. Diversion and interrupts might not be “the ultimate combo”, but I never had troubles with it.

Spirit of Failure: For 30 seconds target foe has a 25% chance to miss with attacks. You gain 1-4 energy for each miss.

doesn’t look that exciting, but i really learned to like that skill. it works great in combination with other frequently used skills, skills like Aegis, Guardian, Ward Against Melee, or any other stances, conditions, enchantments and hexes that cause the mobs to miss. it’s priceless when there’s a ranger trying to hit you, and you are just hiding behind a wall . it’s really nice when a Barrage attack does not hit at all, you get +4 energy for every arrow that misses. does not happen that often, but its really nice when it does happen. when facing a mixed mob, I usually cast it on 1 or 2 warriors before switching to the casters, the recharge being brought down to 5 seconds with MoR. (Ineptitude {Elite} and Spirit of Failure, if you prefer the Illusion line, is just not funny anymore )

definitely not the ultimate uber build, I just like playing it, that’s all i hope you enjoy it

EDIT: some typos

I actually run an MoR build in GvG. It looks like this:

Me/Mo

9+1 Fast Casting
9+2 Domination (rune and headgear)
9+1 Inspiration
9 Protection
3 Healing

MoR {E}
Diversion
Blackout
Shatter Enchant
Drain Enchant
Power Drain
Aegis
Res. Chant

For the most part, it works pretty well. The energy can be a little hard to manage at times, but you have to remember that MoR recharges your energy management skills twice as fast too.

Sadly, MoR does not halve the recharge of Blackout, as it's not a spell, but it's still a useful thing to have on your bar. Shame or Cry of Frustration are viable in this spot as well, although Cry is mostly useful against spike teams, whereas Shame is useful against every team since every team will have monks.

Diversion spam is great for shutting down flashbots, and really any spammable skill such as Draw Conditions, Reversal, etc. Having both Shatter and Drain under MoR is nice enchant removal, and Shatter allows you to do some damage to contribute to a spike. I generally save Power Drain for 2+ second casts, although I can interrupt 1 second casts pretty consistently if I'm watching the target.

Having Aegis on this build is just 1337; with MoR and a +20% enchanting mod I can keep it up roughly 50% of the time. Res. Chant because having a hard res on a mesmer is a good thing in GvG, and probably HA as well, and Res. Chant is one of the best.

im currently ascending with first mes char and i use this build:
res sig
leech sig
ether feast
power drain
MoR
arcane echo
energy burn
spirit of failure

pretty self explanatory- hit e burn as much as possible with ae and mor. spread sof around the warr or ranger types. use leech sig and power drain for energy.

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No its not.

Just an idea but people totally underestimate power leak. If you manage to interrupt a skill (not saying thats easy but you can take your time initially) that foe loses 26 energy (with 16 domination) 26 energy !!!! and if you follow that with shame (loses 15) thats 41 energy. I know interrupting is difficult but you only have to do it once. The relevance being if you could fairly happily use power leak, using mantra of recovery, you could easily deny 2 monks at a time. Skills might look like this

1. Mantra of Recovery {E}
2. E-Tap
3. E-Burn
4. Shame
5. Signet of Weariness
6. Power Leak
7. Drain Enchantment/ Spirit of Failure (spamable on multiple warriors if using MoR - possibly counter MoR cost ??)
8. Res Signet

Burn, Tap and Weariness are really support denial skills with the main e-denial coming from shame and leak - recharges now like 10 seconds or something. So in 2 skills you can deny 80% of foes energy - finished off with a quick burn and they're practically useless. This can be maintained with weariness and e-tap (all fairly friendly recharges)

However the main problem is that initial interrupt. I can interrupt 3/4 second casting spells like 70% of the time e.g. Healing Touch then things like Orison of Healing 1 second casting time, are easy. But most boon prot spells are 1/4 which are just damned impossible so this build wouldn't really work on them.

In GvG or HA, you could find a WoH monk do a quick leak/shame/burn then move onto enemy Boon Prot and weariness/tap drain enchant or something.
This would require lots of concentration and would work well in a team with lots of elementals doing huge damage so enemy warriors aren't too concerned with you.

Any comments ?

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Before the first buff, MoR was worth using. After the buffs, its comparable with any other elite.

Crispy's build looks quite strong, MoR Aegis is hell for an attack-heavy team. Though I would probably fit spirit of failure in, with aegis it's potentially a huge source of energy for you as well as additional anti-attacker.

Well, i've always thought that MoR is good ONLY for Inspiration Mesmers. Domination/Illusion Mesmers suffer serious energy management problems with MoR up.

I don't agree themis. I'm currently trying a pimped out e-denial build using MoR. In it I use e-tap and drain enchant which are my energy management. E-tap is great and gives me +8 energy and using MoR it would recharge in 12.5 seconds . Drain Enchant gives me +9 energy and would also recharge in 12.5. Futhermore I use shame extensively and that would just flippin' rule with a quicker recharge (and also gives me +5 energy).

For extensive e-denial - power leak + MoR = -26 energy every 10 seconds, supposing you know how to interrupt.

You don't agree with me (which is comprehensive, i often don't agree with myself either ) but you state 2 inspiration skills : eTap and Drain enchants...
MoR needs at least two inspi skills to "feed" it up. All Mantra of Recovery builds i've seen bundle 2-3 inspi skills. So, in my taste, it doesn't leave enough space for dom/illusion variety.

Personally i don't like depending on target's enchantments. I consider Drain enchants as a support spell, i would never bundle it up as a necessary energy management build skill. In your case, it's a necessity : MoR will cause you energy management problems without it.

My comment about your build is that target switching with MoR up is counter-productive. And your build needs constant target switching. In my opinion, your build is interesting but hard to play, and depends heavily on targets' enchantments. But in certain situations it is a valid build.

Btw : why would you need to power leek 26 energy every 10 seconds ? Your target has infinite energy ?

Interesting response. I agree this build is hard to play and I too used to think drain enchantment wasn't that good and was fairly situational. However after playing many mesmer builds (mainly E-surge variations) all using drain enchantment, I would argue that this spell is extremely useful and I couldn't manage without it. Against a boon prot, its obviously very good and its great fun draining reversal of fortune before it has a change to trigger. But if your managing to do a pretty good job e-denying but are low on energy, you can do a quick TAB cycle to find a foe with an enchantment (guarentee there is at least one).

If anything, once I've used drain enchantment, I find that foe is still enchanted -- mainly boon prots using multiple enchantments. Meaning wouldn't Drain Enchant with 12 second recharge be just dandy ? Energy Tap is great and unsituational and with 12 recharge means great energy management.

As for Power Leak, its pretty much the only skill I've been using recently lol. I just think its sooo powerful... -26 energy !!! With 10 recharge this spell would just be fantastic (you obviously must be able to interrupt or it would be useless). Because its so affective it might be possible to use power leak + shame then forget about that monk for awhile because they will need to keep spamming 5 energy cost spells to remain affective so they won't have much chance to regen energy, moving onto second monk target using Burn + E Tap + Drain Enchant (if neccessary) and oh wait a minute power leak has recharged.. BOOM.. -26 energy. Move back onto first monk and repeat as neccesary.

I haven't found maintaining MoR a problem but thats because I realised you don't constantly need to maintain it and with strategic useage it doesn't even cost that much over a period of time (especially with the increased energy gain from E-Tap Shame and Drain Enchant).

I hope this clarifys some macaroons for ya.

Put this way (MoR used with caution, in a strategic way -as you state-) i agree.

Diversion has never been a good skill since the first nerf.
MoR is a stance; meet an offensive character of any kind that uses phsical damage and you can kiss your ass goodbye. Ranger spiker, warrior spiker, anything. Will diversion save you from this? No. Will MoR? No, it is a stance and thus prohibits you from using any other stance that *Might* have saved you; including any elite that might have saved you. Unless they fix it so it isn't so energy draining...still won't be on my skill bar.

Me/Mo or Me/N using domination inspiration and fast casting (other than resistances) what stance do you expect me to use that will 'save me' ???
If a warrior started bashing me there's a thing called kiting and for warriors and rangers there is such a thing as monks who will hopefully stop you from dying.

Energy is really not a problem using MoR. I use willcrusher so I have 49 energy and really with E-tap and drain enchant 12 second recharge I often find I'm not using enough energy. If I've got too much energy I can just save energy management skills to near the end of MoR then renew MoR then use energy management again. etc etc. If ur struggling with energy your not using MoR properly. After an intensive drain (shame + leak + burn) you wouldn't neccesarily need to do that again for awhile so you can just let energy regen on its own or locate another target use MoR then energy manage skills and proceed to deny more energy.

Balancing up, there is a chance of you over denying or removing energy that isn't actually there so don't be over active so you can let your energy regen by itself sometimes if not I still find it easy to maintain MoR for awhile using Etap and Drain Enchant to keep up energy

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